The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [106]
How smart Mr. Forrest had been, I thought, how incredibly smart to remain alone as he had.
My knees felt as if they were made from hollow glass, and I knew I might collapse, but I did not move.
I had no doubt why my father had liked him; Mr. Forrest had shared the burden of my mother. He had a way of revealing her beauty to her that she trusted. His conversation was like a sparkling cocktail held aloft. In his eyes, my mother had been the neglected Garbo still in her slip, forever young, unspent.
I wondered if he would look up and see me standing on the path. Over the fireplace, I saw the painting he had bought from Julia Fusk. Finished the same year she’d painted me, the portrait Mr. Forrest had chosen was of a clothed woman whose face you could see. With her eyes shut, she was leaning to the left and pointing down toward the mantel, where my glance now fell. Spaced along it were three almost-perfect wooden globes made by my father. He had become obsessed with how these anonymous globes represented the finest woodwork he had ever done. Sitting in his workshop in the last few years of his life, while I gave birth to children and went to wine-and-cheese parties as Jake’s wife, my father would sand these spheres for hours. He came in at night only after he saw the lights in the house go off. He would step quietly across the backyard and into the kitchen, climbing the steep wooden steps to his room, where the guns were kept.
I had blamed my mother. I had blamed her for everything. It was easy. She was crazy—“mentally ill,” Mr. Forrest had said.
For years I had done my penance for blaming someone who was essentially helpless. I had warmed baby food and fed it to her with long pink spoons pilfered from Baskin-Robbins. I had carted her to doctors’ appointments, first with blankets and then towels to hide the world from her. I had even stood and watched her drop my grandchild.
I would not disturb Mr. Forrest; I would not ask him for money or confess my sins to him. I would leave him with his portrait, with his spherical pieces of wood, and with Bad Boy, who had scratched my mother’s cheek.
I turned and regained the sidewalk, walked to the car in order to fetch my purse. I could not bring myself to get back in the car. I could not imagine the sound of the engine. It would destroy the music I heard and the hush of the dark, abandoned lawns. I took the keys out of the ignition and walked around to the other side. I would leave them in the glove box.
I reached my hand inside the open window on the passenger side and quickly opened and closed the glove box, tucking Hamish’s keys away. I grabbed my purse. From braid to bullets, I thought. How this would have satisfied my ill-fated therapist. He would delight in the alliteration until I would want to smack him silly. Perhaps I would give him a call sometime. A little ring-a-ling from hell.
I heard the Bartók go silent. I placed the purse firmly on my shoulder. I would walk to Mrs. Leverton’s, let myself in, and—was it possible?—calmly shoot myself.
As I stood, I noticed that Mr. Forrest had shut off his lights. I saw Bad Boy bounding across the lawn and heard the front door close. I turned and walked at what I considered a normal pace, down to the end of the block.
I did not look at my mother’s house—never my father’s, though it had been his earnings that had paid for it. His earnings that had set me up, allowed me to raise two daughters on live modeling and occasional secretarial work. I had moved, married, had children, my own home, a job, but just like my father, I had seen the yawning tide that was my mother’s need and fallen in. Jake would say I had dived in, that it had been my choice to return.
Mental illness had the unique ability to metastasize across the generations. Would it be Sarah? Would it be tiny